Mike Escamilla finally made it up to Vancouver the end of last week. On the way up he shot a new ad with teammate Rich Hirsch for their new bike sponsor Redline, expect good things from them. This past weekend Mike rode with some serious heavy hitters and BMX legends including the likes of Jay Miron, Dave Osato and local Vancouver bad-ass and soon-to-be-worldwide destroyer Dustin Guenther who is also riding for the newly reformed and revamped three-man Redline freestyle team. The new bikes are looking real good. Mike’s signature shoe the Rooftop 3 is in stores now.

Taj Mihelich has been putting a lot of hard work and long hours into Terrible One lately. Riding has been good though, he went on a couple of small local riding excursions with T1/etnies teammate Joe Rich which is exactly what the doctor ordered for his peace of mind. It rained quite a bit this last week—actually hailed and thundered too. With the wet conditions outside, Taj got to stay in and play some music and rehearse in preparation for a live performance with his band this weekend in Phoenix. The Roscoe is in stores now

Ruben Alcantara has been back home in Malaga for over a week now and really enjoying spending time with his family and friends he hasn’t seen for a while because of the Fly Bikes tour in New Zealand. Besides getting over jet-lag, Ruben has been digging at the local trails with his friends and after some rain the jumps are looking good. They also hit up a pool that they got word of from a friend. It took them forever to find the damn thing because of some sketchy directions but the hunt was well worth it according to Ruben. The pool is more like a skatepark with hips, tight tranny’s and bowl corners, but because of the rain it had a crapload of water in it. Next time they make a trip to the pool the crew will come armed appropriately with buckets and brooms. Ruben’s shoe the Terranea will be in stores in June.

Jamie Bestwick was home in State College last week hanging with his pregnant wife Kerry and riding at Camp Woodward where he has been working on all kinds of crazy new moves, believe me! He has some stuff up his sleeve that is going to be impossible to touch, just wait and see. Speaking of Woodward, watch out for an upcoming contest on etnies.com where you could win something huge from Jamie and Camp Woodward. Jamie headed down to Thailand Wednesday to do a Tsunami relief benefit demo with a whole bunch of other X Games athletes.

Joe Rich has been riding around home in Austin and sessioning the T1 ramp with everyone. This past week he and T1 co-owner and etnies teammate Taj Mihelich went on some stealth riding missions around the outskirts of Austin. Joe has also been working real hard at T1 and is real stoked that the new T1 zine is done.

Last week for Dave Freimuth was fairly chill, he rode the Area 51 skatepark and played volleyball on Wednesday. On Friday Brian Kachinsky and Dave drove down to Chicago to meet up with the Local Exposure crew to start the tour off at Scrap skatepark and the demo went off. The whole purpose of the trip is for locals to get some coverage and a little bit of exposure. Stand outs at the scrap demo were...Dominick Trovato and Brandon Hoerres. Jamie Spritzer dropped a bomb by nose picking an 8-foot wall. Saturday was the demo at Rampage in Davenport, Iowa. Rampage will no longer exist as of the end of March so it was kind of nice to get down there two weekends in a row. The new standard kids, Jeremiah Jones and Jon Rogers were the obvious local favorites. Dave split back home as soon as the demo was done so that he could spend Easter with the family. The weather is finally starting to get nice and now Dave has a cold. Hopefully Dave will be 100 percent by this weekend for the last stop of the local exposure tour at Area 51 in Appleton on Saturday, April 2.
Keep an eye out for a five-minute feature of the Front Brake Revolution contest from Rampage Skatepark on FUEL’s 54321 which will feature etnies riders including our boy Dave Freimuth.

Josh Sticker has finally got some peace and quiet now that a lot of visitors to Austin have left town and he’s done being tour guide. He has been chilling quite a bit going swimming with all the guys and shooting photos with Sandy. Josh has been scoping out some new spots for Ride magazines Jeff Zielinski who will be in town this coming week. Josh leaves for Europe on April 13 for a month where he will go to England, Germany and Barcelona to film for a new Primo video. He returns to the US on May 16.

Sandy

John Heaton has been riding quite a bit at all of his local riding spots but the weather hasn’t been too cooperative so the sessions are limited to indoors. Since returning from the Front Brake Revolution which he attended but didn’t compete in, he rode Kevin Porter Ratty Bikes comp a couple of weekends ago and his teammates placed second in the team competition. John’s been home hanging with his girl Andrea and his peeing little pain in the ass pug mutt dog Frank. John’s been playing hockey a bunch. Go figure?

Garrett Byrnes is home in Jersey relaxing having a good time skating, surfing and riding his newly put together T1 barcode. Garrett is going back to school to get his license to drive and operate backhoes which his dad teaches.

Sandy Carson has been enjoying some better weather in Austin and been going hiking and swimming a bunch. He has also been riding a crapload of street around town, he’s been scoping out some new spots to film and shoot photos at. Austin had some serious hail and thunderstorms the other day which left Sandy time to work on Issue 46 of DIG BMX and building his own website. Sandy has also been working on some art for some shows this summer and fall. It’s tax time too. No fun